Showing results for "Folly" in United States

In the minds of historians and the American public alike, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, not least because he supposedly saved America from the Great Depression. But as historian Jim Powell reveals in this groundbreaking book, Roosevelt's New Deal policies actually prolonged and exacerbated the economic disaster.

Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck—or some combination of them all—leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity. Among their number are scientists, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers, from across the centuries and around the world. They hold in common the silenced aftermath of failure, the name that rings no bells.

Briarcliff Mansion and the land it occupies are owned by Emory University, which refers to it as its "Briarcliff Campus." Fortune and Folly, in part, illuminates the largely lost story of how the mansion, and the entire surrounding neighborhood, got its name. But in order to understand the mansion, we have to understand the man who built it. Briarcliff Mansion once belonged to a man named Asa Candler, Jr.—also known as Buddie. The second son and namesake of Coca-Cola founder Asa Griggs Candler, Buddie was a wealthy real estate developer of great successes and greater failures.